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Alfred W. Harris (1853–1920)

Alfred W. Harris introduced the
bill that chartered Virginia Normal and Collegiate
Institute (later Virginia
State University) during his time in the House of Delegates (1881–1888). Born enslaved in Fairfax County, during the American Civil War (1861–1865) his family moved to Alexandria, where he attended a
school operated by the Bureau of
Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands and later the city's first
segregated public schools. He won a seat on the Alexandria common council as a
twenty-year-old and became a lawyer. Harris relocated in Petersburg and in 1881 won the first of four
consecutive terms term in the House of Delegates, representing Dinwiddie County. He played
key roles in Virginia
Normal and Collegiate Institute's first years, serving as its de facto treasurer and
the first secretary of the board of visitors. Harris strongly supported the Readjuster and later Republican Party leader William Mahone, even backing his
candidate in the 1888 congressional election against John Mercer Langston. After leaving the House of
Delegates, Harris served as a Newport
News specials customs inspector and a Petersburg census enumerator. He
resigned his post after being arrested and exonerated twice on charges of theft.
Following a stroke, Harris died in his Petersburg home in 1920. MORE...

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Early Years and Education

Alfred William Harris was born on August 19, 1853, in Fairfax County and was the
son of Henry Harris, a free
man, and Jemima Magingo Harris, who was likely enslaved. Little is known
about his early life, but during the Civil War the family went to Alexandria, where he may have attended a school
operated by the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands and possibly one
of the city's segregated public schools after 1870. Harris edited the Summer
Tribune in Alexandria before joining the editorial staff of the
People's
Advocate in April 1876. Three weeks later, he left to study law
with a local African American attorney. In February 1880, the Alexandria
corporation court admitted Harris to practice law, and the following year he
earned his law degree from Howard University, in Washington, D.C.

Political Career

Early in the 1870s, Harris became involved in
local Republican politics, and he served a one-year term on Alexandria's common
council from 1874 to 1875. He was part of a delegation that in May 1875 petitioned
President Ulysses S. Grant
to reorganize the city's post office, customs house, and internal revenue office.
In April 1880, state Republicans selected Harris as a candidate for presidential
elector. That July, he attended a public meeting in Richmond at which many of the
city's leading African Americans issued an appeal to the city school board to hire
black teachers for the black schools and to equalize courses of instruction for
white and black students. He moved to Petersburg to practice law soon thereafter
and was then perhaps the only African American
attorney in the city. In Alexandria, on December 31, 1884, Harris married
Ida R. Morris, a former public school principal. They had at least five sons and
one daughter.

Harris attended a convention of African American Republicans
in Petersburg on March 14, 1881, that had been called to decide whether
to affiliate with the Readjuster Party. The Readjusters were formed in 1879 to
refinance the state's public
debt at a lower rate of interest in order to increase the funds available
for the public schools. Harris spoke for a large minority of delegates who opposed
the convention's organizers and the resolutions that the convention passed
endorsing the Readjusters.

In October 1881, both factions of the Dinwiddie County Republicans united to
nominate Harris for the House of Delegates. He defeated a Democrat by a margin of 855 to 473 in November
when the coalition of Republicans and Readjusters won majorities in the General Assembly and all the
statewide offices. Harris was reelected three times, all with comfortable margins,
and served for eight years. While in the assembly he was a member of the
influential Committees on Courts of Justice and on Schools and Colleges and also
of the less-prestigious Committees on Immigration, on the Library, on Manufactures
and Mechanics Arts, on Public Property, and on Retrenchment and Economy.

Harris introduced several local bills while in the House of Delegates, including
one that did not pass in 1882 to forbid the county's commonwealth's attorney,
sheriff, and treasurer from holding any other offices at the same time. In that
same session he introduced a bill that passed to allow a referendum in part of the
county to determine whether to exempt that part of the county from the state's
1866 fence law protecting farmers from damage caused by free-ranging livestock.
Harris supported the reform agenda of the Readjuster-Republican coalition,
including refinancing the public debt to reduce the interest rate and increase
money for the public schools.

As part of the coalition's reforms designed
to benefit African Americans, Harris introduced the bill in 1882 that chartered
the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University),
the state's first public college for African Americans. Harris sat on the board of
visitors and served as its first secretary. Acting as the de facto treasurer
during the initial months of the school's operation in 1883, Harris was accused of
fiscal improprieties but later exonerated. Two years later, however, financial
mismanagement, excessive salaries, and poor oversight of building construction
spurred the removal of the board, and Harris was not reappointed. In January 1886,
after the Democrats had regained control of the assembly, he helped engineer the
assembly's passage of a bill to incorporate the Colored Agricultural and
Industrial Association of Virginia to sponsor an annual state fair for African
Americans. He was elected its president in November 1886, and as a trustee
purchased property in Dinwiddie County for the organization in 1888.

Harris was active in Republican Party state
politics throughout the decade. He was a delegate to the April 1884 state
convention of the Readjuster-Republican Party and also a delegate to the
Republicans' national convention that year in Chicago. The Readjuster Party
collapsed soon thereafter, and Harris and most of the other African Americans
resumed or continued their participation in the Republican Party. On July 15,
1885, at the party's state convention, he spoke forcefully against a plan of
organization that would weaken African American representation and denounced the
Readjuster senator Harrison
H. Riddleberger for criticizing the Republican Party leader William
Mahone. On January 17, 1888, Harris attended the founding meeting of the Virginia
branch of the Republican League, and served on its platform and resolutions
committee as well as the permanent organization committee.

Harris remained loyal to Mahone even as the
Republican Party faced division. At the state convention in May 1888, he
reportedly exchanged blows with Matt N. Lewis, a Petersburg editor who favored a
rival Republican faction. That autumn, Harris campaigned throughout the Fourth
Congressional District for Richard W. Arnold, a white Republican who ran for the House of Representatives
with Mahone's support. He was opposed by Edward C. Venable, a Democrat, and by
John Mercer Langston, an African American Republican. The Republican split led to
Venable's victory, but Langston successfully challenged the result. When evidence
of corruption in the election was compiled in 1889, Harris testified that
Langston's supporters had prevented him and other canvassers from speaking at
Arnold's campaign rallies. Early the next year, as spokesman for a small group of
Virginia Republicans, Harris testified before, and also submitted a written
statement to, a congressional committee that described how election officials in
the state, most of whom were Democrats, had evaded voting laws and disfranchised about 30,000
African Americans.

Later Years

On February 1, 1889, Harris led a
delegation to petition Benjamin
Harrison, the president-elect, to place Mahone in the cabinet. Harris did
not run for reelection to the House of Delegates in 1889, probably because he was
appointed special inspector of customs at Newport News that August, a prominent
office for an African American in the state. A few weeks later he attended the
local Republican convention in Sussex County, where he backed one candidate and then scuffled with a
supporter of a rival claimant. His opponent even fired a pistol, possibly aimed at
Harris.

Participation of African Americans in Virginia politics fell off sharply during
the 1890s as a result of new state voting laws and fell further after the adoption of the new state constitution in
1902. Nevertheless, Harris remained active in local politics and opposed
efforts by white Republicans to force African Americans out of party offices. In
1910, he was one of eight African Americans out of the eighteen census enumerators
appointed for the city of Petersburg.

In December 1905, Harris was arrested in Petersburg and charged with conspiring
with another African American to have the latter steal two bales of cotton and
sell one to a commission merchant. Harris adamantly denied the charges, which were
based solely on the testimony of his supposed accomplice, and was acquitted by the
mayor's court. The commonwealth's attorney failed in his attempt to pursue the
case in the Hustings Court. Despite being cleared of the charges, by December 9,
Harris had resigned from his post in the internal revenue office. In June 1912, he
was arrested again, this time on a charge by an accomplice of orchestrating the
theft of a whiskey still. Finding no corroborating evidence besides the accusation
of his supposed co-conspirator, the charges were dismissed several days later.

Having suffered a stroke that left him incapacitated for about two years, Harris
died of arteriosclerosis and a cerebral hemorrhage at his Petersburg home on March
24, 1920. He was buried with Masonic rites in the city's Blandford Cemetery.

Time Line

August 19, 1853
- Alfred W. Harris is born enslaved in Fairfax County to Henry Harris, a free man, and Jemima Magingo Harris, who is likely enslaved.